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My latest piece for the Chronicle of Higher Education's "Lingua Franca" blog: Long before Naomi Schaefer Riley’s recent Brainstorm post for The Chronicle attacking the discipline of black studies (the controversy over which seemed to reach some closure yesterday), I’d been thinking about racists. The word, that is, not the people. Certainly, the word was heavily represented in the reaction to Riley. A contributor over at the Innovations blog, Marybeth Gasman, called Riley’s post “uninformed, dismissive, and downright racist.” And Brainstorm’s Laurie Essig wondered, “Is Brainstorm racist for publishing racist attacks?” But the word was on my radar before all this. Specifically, I was picking up on how frequently and in what manner it’s being used by the mainstream press. Consider these ...read more